


The Opposite Of Ghostbusting

by Waffle-o (XylB)



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: FAHC, GTA Universe, brief major character death, monster FAHC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 01:44:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21245450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XylB/pseuds/Waffle-o
Summary: "There's notes in here," Gavin says, placing the police file on the table."For what?""For Jeremy's case leads, for the autopsy, confirmation of death..." Gavin trails off, staring at the sheet. He flips to the next page, the mug shot of Jeremy."I think...I think our guy was the murderer."They all glance up at Gavin."I think we have to solve Jeremy's murder."





	The Opposite Of Ghostbusting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maxride003](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maxride003/gifts).

"Hey, hey Michael, pull my finger." 

"No."

"Michael c'mon, it'll be funny."

"Gav, last time your entire _hand _came off," Jeremy says, grinning. "How do you even mess it up that bad?" 

"Look, not my fault my stitches were loose. That's bloody Ryan's fault."

"If you weren't such a baby you could do it yourself," Ryan adds from his corner of the room, materialising enough to smirk at Gavin, who laughs and lowers his hand.

"Next time," he says, turning mismatched eyes on Michael. "You can do me up. _Then _it'll work." 

"You're fucking insane."

"So you'll do it?" Jeremy asks. He's shimmering enough that they can see the wallpaper behind him.

"I mean yeah of course, but it's still insane," Michael agrees, tongue poking out between his teeth.

A sharp "Okay!" interrupts them, matched by the sound of footsteps marching in. Ryan and Jeremy materialise fully as the rest of them turn to the doorway, and Geoff jumps at the sight of them, as usual. 

"_Christ_," he mutters under his breath, shaking his head. "Why do you all have to be so _creepy_." 

"Not our fault you're still human," Ryan says.

"But we can fix that," Michael offers, his fangs slipping out with his smile.

"No, fuck that!" Geoff says - almost shrieks, waving his hands in the air. "I'm not fucking...drinking blood. Fuck that. You can keep that to yourself."

"More for me," Michael jokes, and Gavin pulls a face. The rest of them laugh. Geoff does a quick little headcount.

"Where's Jack?" He asks - more like sighs, when one of the two green mugs on the table starts rattling. Ryan lazily watches it grow and melt into Jack-shape. Geoff shudders at each crack of bone.

"I'm here!" Jack says cheerfully, tossing an arm around Geoff's shoulders. "Didya miss me?"

"I hate you," Geoff answers.

"Aw, I love you too," Jack replies sweetly, hugging Geoff to his side. "What're we doing, then?"

"I'm glad you asked, Jack."

Geoff pulls out his phone and lays it on the table. They all peer over to look at the image. 

"Need you guys to get that back," Geoff says. "More of our shit from the break-in last week."

"I don't even _recognise_that," Ryan says. "We had that?" 

"It's the black box from Michael's 'copter."

There's silence for a moment.

"Fucking hell," Michael says. "He knows our names. Our real names."

"Exactly," Geoff replies, his mouth in a thin, straight line. "I don't know who the fuck he is, but we need that box back. Ryan, Jeremy, can you scout? See what we're working with here."

"Yeah, we can do that," Jeremy agrees, floating back to the ground. "Hopefully he's just as clueless as the last guy."

"Hopefully."

\-- 

Ryan and Jeremy approach the house - the _mansion_, more like - under the cliché cover of darkness. All the lights are off, and there's some cameras swivelling around the garden and the doors, whirring quietly on their posts. 

Thankfully for them, cameras have never been able to see them.

So they stroll right up to the front door, Jeremy floating a couple inches off the ground and Ryan holding a shotgun close to his chest. He melts into the shadows around the door, invisible to the passing eye, while Jeremy phases through the door to look inside.

"No guards," Jeremy reports a moment later, his head sticking out of the wall. "Try the back windows."

Ryan nods, stalking off behind the house to find an easy in. There's a bathroom window on the second floor, cracked open. He stows the shotgun on his back and sighs.

"Should've brought Jack," he mutters, grabbing a ledge to start hauling himself up. Jeremy pokes through the window at the top to check on him.

"I fucking hate climbing," Ryan says, reaching for another handhold.

"Don't worry, I'll catch you," Jeremy jokes.

"Thanks," Ryan deadpans, laughing despite himself. "That's real comforting."

He makes it up without falling, though, and pulls the window open more so he can tumble inside gracelessly. Jeremy laughs at him. Ryan flips him off, and feels himself melt into the darkness of the room, weightless and incorporeal.

"He asleep?" He asks.

"Seems to be," Jeremy replies. "I don't know where the box is, though."

"Home office?" Ryan pulls himself to standing again, and walks over to carefully open the bathroom door. "Lead the way."

Jeremy dives down through the floor to find the office, and a few minutes later he surfaces, gesturing Ryan to come down the wide, carpeted stairs. Ryan follows easily, cautiously checking corners for any signs of movement. As far as they know, this guy lives alone, but their intel could always be off.

Jeremy wavers oddly as he wisps through the door, and a moment later sticks a thumbs-out through the wood to let Ryan know it's safe. 

The office is small, but clearly expensive. Mahogany table and drawers, a high-backed, almost _regal _looking chair - and just as uncomfortable as it looks, Ryan finds out within seconds while Jeremy waves his hand through the mahogany bookshelves - and a swathe of big, clear monitors and pristine keyboards. This guy isn't just a two-bit hack. All the drawers are locked. 

"Who even _is _this guy?" Jeremy whispers, peering at the family photos hung squarely beside the windows. 

"Don't know, but he's a prick," Ryan answers, fiddling with a lockpick set.

"He's got a wife and kids," Jeremy continues. "Or, well, he's posing with a lady and two kids. Didn't see any sign of them in here, though."

"Probably a divorcee," Ryan says, but he knows why Jeremy's pointing this out.

"We don't know if we have to kill him yet," he reminds him. "You know we'd never ruin a family like that."

"Yeah," Jeremy says softly, still looking at the photos. Ryan knows he's thinking of his own death, years ago, thinking of how Geoff could've been in his place now if he hadn't -

Ryan pushes the memory from his mind and unlocks the top drawer. Nothing except pens and cables. The second drawer has a digital camera and a couple manila files with LSPD stamped on them.

"Police?" Ryan murmurs, briefly picking up the files. They're all cold cases, unknown murderers - and at the bottom of the pile is -

"Jeremy," Ryan says, showing him the name on the folder. _Jeremy Dooley_. 

Jeremy blinks, reaching out for it instinctively before dropping his hands. They float right through Ryan's arm. He doesn't say anything, just furrows his brows and turns back to the shelves.

Ryan slides the file under his jacket to keep.

The third drawer has a jammed lock, but with some skill and a lot of swearing, Ryan manages to yank it open, only to find disappointment and tax returns.

The fourth, and last, drawer, comes open as smoothly as a hot knife through butter - like it's been opened _recently_, and _frequently_. 

"Got it," Ryan says, staring down at the black box sitting smack in the middle. The temptation to grab it and run is almost overwhelming. Jeremy seems to sense this.

"We can't take it yet," Jeremy says. "He might have copies."

"I know," Ryan says. They don't know what he might know, what he might _do _when he finds it missing. 

Before either of them can breathe again, the door to the office slams open - Jeremy whips around and Ryan shoots up from the chair and he can't even grab the shotgun before he sees the other guy shoot - but this time when the buckshot hits Jeremy's side, he _obliterates _into ghostly shards, completely shot out of sight and when the barrel turns on Ryan, he feels dread creep through his bones, up the back of his neck, and he barely has time to duck before the next shot blasts out in the tiny office. Ryan grabs his own gun and heads for the shadows draped over the bookshelves, melting into them while the owner reloads his two shots, looking around and trying to find him. 

"I know what you are, shadow," he calls out, and flicks the lights on before cocking the gun. The light washes over Ryan and exposes him, makes him corporeal again, and he makes a desperate break for escape, grasping onto the faint shadows behind the open door to disguise himself, makes the man's eyes pass right over him for a crucial second - except the man meets his eyes.

Ryan shoots before the man can, missing deliberately to only clip the guy's foot and distract him long enough that Ryan can slip out, running full speed to the front door and kicking it open.

"I'll get you!" The man roars behind him, shooting wide into the wall. "I'll get you, Haywood!"

Chills run down Ryan's spine at his name, and he runs out the open door, barely comforted by the darkness.

\-- 

Ryan doesn't stop running the whole way back. He's still catching his breath when the crew greet him, when they ask where Jeremy is, when Geoff grabs him a glass of water and he sinks into a kitchen chair and the crew gather sombrely around the table. The ceiling light is almost too bright - he craves the shadowed corners, the camouflage. Someone's asking him a question, someone else is chatting - he can't quite understand over the replay of Jeremy's - death? re-death? - in his head, ghostly shards and the horrifying lack of noise -

"He knows us," he blurts out instead, looking up at his crewmates. "Our target. He knows us."

"Our names?" Geoff asks. Ryan nods - and then shakes his head.

"He knows _what _we are," he says. "He - He shot Jeremy." 

"But Jeremy's...a ghost," Jack says.

"He shot him with - I don't know what, but Jeremy just - disappeared."

There's silence for a beat.

"Disappeared?" Gavin asks gently. "Is he - Is he coming back?"

"I think...I think he's dead," Ryan says slowly. "Again. He like..._shattered_. I haven't seen any sign of him since." 

"Shit," Geoff whispers, dropping into a chair.

"No way," Michael says, shaking his head. "What can even kill a ghost?"

"Phosphor," Jack replies. "And copper."

"So what, we got a fucking alchemist on our hands?" Geoff asks. Ryan thinks about the mansion again, retraces their footsteps, from the window to the hallway to the office -

"I think he's got some sort of...paranormal...security system," Ryan adds. "There was - a moment when Jeremy sort of...I don't know, glitched out? I just thought it was because he was going through the door but..."

"So we're dealing with a ghost hunter with an alarm system."

"I don't think it's just ghosts, Geoff."

Silence falls once more. Ryan shifts in his seat and the movement reminds him of the stiff piece of file pressing against his side.

"Actually, wait," he says, reaching into his jacket. "The guy had this in his desk."

He puts Jeremy's case file on the desk.

"Along with a bunch of other cold cases," he continues, while Gavin hesitantly reaches out for the file. "I don't know what their connection is, but they were all official LSPD files."

"Is he an officer?" Michael asks, peering over Gavin's shoulder at the folder. "Sheriff? Chief?"

"Too rich for that," Geoff comments dryly. "He's definitely got an in with them, though."

"There's...notes in here," Gavin says, placing the file on the table.

"For what?" Ryan asks."

"For...For Jeremy's case leads, for the autopsy, confirmation of death..." Gavin trails off, staring at the sheet. He flips to the next page, the mug shot of Jeremy, with a big handwritten note on it saying 'phosphor + Cu'.

"I think...I think our guy was the murderer."

They all glance up at Gavin.

"I think we have to solve his murder."

\--

"Right, so, what enemies does Jeremy have?" Geoff asks, flipping the whiteboard over to the blank side.

"Same ones we all have," Michael snorts. "Don't think he has any personal beef with anybody."

"I'd be surprised if he does," Ryan says. Keeps the present tense. It's only been a couple of days but hope leaks out quicker than helium, and it seems like their collective patch is to pretend Jeremy's still out there somewhere, maybe stuck on the other side, maybe desperately trying to communicate with them, trying to come back.

Ryan would like to believe it.

"Okay, well, we can't scout our friendly local ghost hunter," Geoff says.

"You can," Gavin points out.

"Yeahhhhh, no," Geoff deadpans. "No thanks. I'm not dying by association. We've got to explore other leads."

"What leads?" Jack asks. Geoff twists his mouth in thought.

"Border gangs," Ryan says. "Let's just ask around. No harm in that, right?"

"What do we even ask?"

Ryan shrugs at Jack's question.

"Ask if they know who lives up there?" He tries. "Maybe if they've heard anything. I bet we could trade something to them for information."

"Protection," Michael says confidently. "Offer protection for a heist or whatever plans they've got."

"You know what? Sounds good," Geoff agrees. "Let's split up."

\-- 

Ryan takes Jack to the Apex gang on their east side - and by takes Jack, he means he's carrying two identical pistols in his belt and one of them doesn't fire. Which is pretty helpful, really, because if Jack could _function_as his imitation object then they'd be in a lot more trouble when he wants to be a car. Or a helicopter. Or Gavin's surgery kit. 

"Hopefully they won't shoot first this time," Ryan grumbles, pulling his car to a stop inside the auto shop that marks the neutral zone between their territory. Jack vibrates against his hip in agreement. Ryan pats him and gets out of the car. He leans against it for a few minutes, waiting for Apex to come out and meet him.

There's four of them when they do appear, all smiles and brass knuckles.

"Vagabond," Skull calls, spreading his arms out wide. "What brings you here?"

"I need information," Ryan says, pushing off from the car to meet Skull halfway. They clasp each other's forearms in a quick handshake - more of an understanding than a greeting. _I'm not here to fight you_. 

"What on?"

"Rumours. Hearsay. Anything about us."

"Well, I heard Bone are lookin' to get their hands on some of the armoured trucks coming through tomorrow."

"We don't care about those."

Skull arches an eyebrow.

"Something happen?" He asks. Ryan stays silent. Skull looks around.

"Say, where's your little ghost buddy?" He continues, fixing his gaze on Ryan once more. Jack vibrates at his hip.

"Busy," Ryan replies. Skull tilts his head. Seems to think for a moment.

"Heard about someone selling off Fake loot," he says. "Exclusively off the record, you understand. You won't find him in any underground markets."

"Do you have an address?"

"I have half of one."

"Good enough."

\-- 

"We got part of an address," Ryan says as he walks into the living room. Jack forms back into his own body, peering over at the slip of paper in Ryan's hand.

"So did we," Michael replies, holding a length of thread between his teeth as he readjusts Gavin's knee. Gavin looks staunchly away from his own surgery and whoops weakly at the news.

"What happened to you two?" Jack asks.

"Idiot got his foot stuck."

"You tripped?" Ryan teases, walking around to face Gavin.

"Look here," Gavin starts indignantly, and laughs a second later, waving a hand in the air. "Yeah, all right, I tripped. Stupid, really."

"Par for the course then," Jack comments. Michael laughs.

"Bastard," Gavin responds. "Anyway, so we going to this address?"

"What else would we do," Ryan says, shrugging.

"How fucking _long_is Geoff going to take," Jack mutters, reaching over for Gavin's phone. Gavin abruptly holds it out of his reach and a brief tussle starts between the two - it's not long before Michael thumps Gavin in the chest to keep him still and Gavin loses hold of the phone, dropping it gracelessly to the floor. 

"No - No, Jack!" He shrieks, batting his hands in the air for it. "Jack, you arsehole, that's a new phone - "

"Exactly," Jack grins, picking it up. Ryan bites his knuckle to stifle his laughter as Jack becomes an exact duplicate of Gavin's phone, both of them clattering to the floor with faint thuds. Gavin ragdolls, defeatedly, on the sofa. Michael ties off his stitch.

"Man, imagine if Jack could become living things," Michael says while he tidies away the surgery kit.

"Like an organ?" Ryan offers.

"Yeah, exactly like that," Michael agrees, glancing up at him with a mischievous little smile.

"Good thing most of us don't have removable organs," Ryan laughs.

"Ryan, why do you hate me, Ryan," Gavin moans.

"Hey, Michael suggested it."

"Michael, why do you hate me."

"Jackass, I just fixed you." Michael slaps Gavin's new stitches and Gavin playfully kicks him back, both of them dissolving into giggles while Gavin tries to reach his phones.

\-- 

The address - or at least their best guess - is an nondescript suburban house with white painted wood and a grey garage door. There's a basketball hoop in the driveway.

"I guess this is it," Geoff sighs, glancing from his phone back to the house. It's only Ryan and Geoff this time, the former for potential supernatural outsmarting and the latter in case this house is also paranormally booby trapped.

The man that answers the door is as nondescript as his house.

"Howdy," he says, crossing his arms. 

"Are you Jonah?" Geoff asks.

"Depends who's asking."

"We are," Ryan says, opening his jacket enough for Jonah to see his pistol.

"Funny," Jonah says, shrugging in a way that lifts his hoodie enough for them to spy a glint of burnished metal. "I wasn't expecting visitors today."

"We're not customers," Geoff says, and pushes Jonah backwards into the house. Jonah stumbles back, taken by surprise, and Ryan and Geoff quickly move in and shut the door behind them. Ryan plants a hand on Jonah's chest and disarms him easily, pressing the tip of Jonah's gun against his abdomen.

"You've got some pretty rare items, we've heard," Ryan says. "Where'd you get it from?"

"Here and there," Jonah tries, grinning. Ryan slams him once against the wall. Jonah winces.

"Got it from some fucking asshole in a mask," he says, looking between them both. "I don't know who he was. Some fucking lowlife."

"Show us the stuff," Geoff orders. Ryan lets Jonah go after he nods, and they follow him down into a dank basement.

"Jesus Christ," Geoff whispers. There's boxes upon _boxes _of just..._stuff _down here - most of it tech, by the looks of it. Big plastic monitors and clunky keyboards and frayed wires and ribbon cables - and Jonah's digging in a busy set of shelves on the back wall, shoving plastic tubs aside to get at a box. 

"It's a hobby," Jonah explains as he tugs the box out. "I restore old shit. I don't usually do the other sort of shit."

"You mean the black market?" Ryan asks drily. It's so dark down here that he's not entirely physical anymore - Geoff's arm brushes right through him when he passes.

"Yeah." Jonah pauses, setting the box down on a clear patch of table. "Look - I dunno, a friend gave this to me, said I could make some serious cash off it. I barely know what it is, I'm not involved in anything, I just needed the money." He looks almost scared now, pushing the box over to them.

Geoff paws through the box, rummaging around their files and blueprints and hard drives - thankfully only the heist ones, nothing with any of their information on it - to check what's still in there.

"So then what's this we hear about you going around to other gangs, Jonah?" Geoff asks when he's done checking, looking lazily up at him. "You seem to know them."

"I don't," Jonah insists. "My friend - he sent me names and - and addresses and shit, where to meet them -"

"So he's a puppet," Geoff says to Ryan. "Great. Fucking useless."

"Who's your friend?" Ryan asks. Jonah doesn't answer.

"We can hurt you more than they can," Geoff warns him. Ryan knows he's still angry about Jeremy, can feel it radiating off of him in waves.

Jonah snaps two seconds later, babbling information, and Geoff takes out his phone to dial Jack and Gavin.

"We've got a lead."

\-- 

Ryan and Geoff return to the penthouse with their box of shit in tow, and spend their time putting it all back in the right place while they wait for Jack and Gavin to get back from their interrogation. Michael's sleeping soundly in one of the guest bedrooms, the curtains taped together so no sunlight will bother him during the day and the door soundproofed so they don't disturb him.

It turns out, in the end, all they've really lost is some heist blueprints, spare cash, a couple of politician files, and the damning black box. They'll have to scrap those heists and make new files, but overall the break-in won't topple them. Not if they can catch mystery mansion guy.

Nowadays it's all a little too obvious, though, that they're missing someone. The way they have to break up into a pair and a triple, the lack of _sound_in the place now, everyone a bit too nervous to start cracking jokes like before, not without Jeremy to join in. It's still fresh, still _raw_, but it seems they've all set aside their grief to focus on revenge. 

Ryan mostly just doesn't want to think about the empty space in his passenger seat.

\-- 

Tom Waites.

That's their mystery mansion owner. Tom.

The name doesn't ring a bell for any of them.

"We have to go back," Gavin says later that evening. "We have to get into that office."

"He's probably moved the box by now," Ryan points out. "And we don't know what traps he has."

"Geoff can go," Michael says with a yawn, pulling his breakfast closer to him.

"Fuck that, not by myself."

"We'll all go," Jack decides. "Three of us on perimeter and two of us go in."

"Who's going in?" Gavin asks.

The five of them trade wary looks at each other.

"Not me!" They all shout in unison.

Michael sighs and sticks a fist in the middle of the group. Everyone follows suit.

"Rock, paper, scissors!"

\-- 

Ryan sneaks along the mansion's hedge line with a disgruntled Gavin - without Jeremy, Ryan's the only one the cameras won't see, so this time they have to _actually _be sneaky. But the upside is, Tom probably doesn't have booby traps for Frankenstein'd humans. 

This time, Gavin jimmies a lock on a back door to get in, and he hangs back while Ryan slips through shadows to make sure it's safe up ahead before beckoning Gavin along. The stairs, thankfully, don't creak when Gavin climbs up them, but he pauses at the top.

"Wait," he says, cocking his head. Ryan raises his eyebrows. Gavin furrows his.

"What's that noise?" He continues.

Ryan tilts his head, trying to figure out what Gavin's hearing. Then, slowly, his ears find the noise - a sound like whistling wind, so low it's barely noticeable.

"Downstairs," Gavin says.

"Basement?" Ryan guesses. They share a look - Gavin shrugs. They turn around to head back down, following the faint noise as best they can to - to a spare room, it looks like, filled with display cases and huge storage shelves. There's a door at the back that, when they approach, reveals itself to be the last barrier between them and the noise.

Ryan creaks the door open and the sound becomes clear, and _loud_, and there's wooden stairs leading down to a wash of light blue light. A shout startles him, but both of them perk up at the voice, shooting a hard glance at each other. 

"Jeremy?" Gavin whispers, and Ryan nods hesitantly before taking the lead, melting into the shadows on the side to see what's at the bottom around the corner.

It's - nothing he expected. There's Jeremy, caught in some sort of - _vortex_, Ryan guesses, a circle of metal on the ground that's crackling with electricity, seemingly keeping him trapped in place - a ghost trap. And there's Tom Waites, with his phosphor shotgun, and a bowl beside him full of coppery powder that, as Ryan watches, he tosses at Jeremy - Jeremy yells in pain and the powder rips sections of his image apart - and bellows a question that Ryan can't make out in the echoey concrete basement. When Jeremy does nothing but cower, Tom cocks the shotgun. 

"Stop!" Ryan shouts, striding forward with his own gun up. Gavin bangs down the stairs behind him, brandishing his dual pistols.

"Step away from him," Gavin orders. Tom just grins, laughs sarcastically.

"I'm just finishing what I started," he says, and shoots Jeremy. Jeremy splinters again, with an awful scream, and Ryan doesn't fucking hesitate to blow out Tom's kneecaps.

Tom drops to the ground with a wail, Gavin lunges to tear his gun from him, and Ryan dashes to the wall to pull out the plug to the metal circle, stopping the electricity and the ghostly shards of Jeremy swirling around, kept in place by the little crackles so he doesn't disappear. Jeremy reforms when it powers down, still twitchy, flinching when Tom growls.

"Fuck you!" He yells, grabbing at his bloody knee.

"You okay?" Ryan asks Jeremy. Jeremy nods silently but doesn't meet his eyes.

"Why are you after us?" Gavin asks.

"Not you," Tom spits, jerking his head to Jeremy. "_Him_." 

"Why him?"

"He killed my _son_!" Tom screams, jabbing a finger at Jeremy - the movement jostles his whole body and he hisses in pain, holding his other bloody kneecap tighter. Gavin and Ryan share a look. 

"We don't go after - your type," Ryan says - but he glances at Jeremy, and Jeremy's staring staunchly at Tom's kneecaps.

"You _killed _him," Tom seethes. 

"I didn't mean to!" Jeremy blurts out, running a hand through his hair and still not meeting Ryan's or Gavin's eyes. "I didn't mean to."

"You should be dead," Tom says. There's silence for a moment.

"You killed him," Gavin murmurs. "You - That's why you had the cold case, _you_did it." 

"Why?" Ryan asks.

"I didn't mean to kill him," Jeremy says, looking at all of them. "I didn't - there - there was a fight," he continues, to Tom. "Some...territory fight. Cal was - he was there, he was part of them."

"Not my son, he would never stoop to your level," Tom bites, but he looks unsure.

"He was part of the Ghosts," Jeremy says, a bit sadly. "I'm sorry, but he - he _was_. He was part of them. In a gang. And we tried to stop it, before it got violent, but Cal, he - " 

Ryan blinks at the mention of _Ghosts_. He remembers that fight. Small time drug dealing gangs, nothing out of the ordinary, back when Jeremy was still human. Barely even a thought before they stepped in to try and stop any bloodshed, see if they couldn't mediate - and Ryan remembers getting jumped, someone brandishing a knife, slashing at his arm - 

"He was going to kill my friend," Jeremy says. "I'm sorry, I didn't - I didn't mean to kill him, I just."

"He was just protecting me," Ryan finishes. Tom doesn't respond. He looks...almost subdued.

"He was in a gang?" He asks quietly.

"I'm sorry," Jeremy repeats, nothing but sincerity in his voice. "I didn't mean to, I just meant to stop him."

No one speaks for a long moment. Gavin slowly picks up Tom's gun.

"Let's go," he says. "Let's - Let's go."

"Don't come after us again," Ryan says. "Nearest hospital is Beverly."

And they leave.

\-- 

"I didn't tell you because...because I regret it," Jeremy says. It's just him and Ryan on the penthouse rooftop a couple nights later, both of them unaffected by the cold wind that blows through them. "I hated that I did it. I didn't want to admit that's what got me - killed."

"I understand," Ryan says, as gently as he can. "You never had to explain."

Jeremy nods, looking out to Mount Chiliad. The sombreness of the moment passes like the breeze.

"What happened?" Ryan asks. "After he shot you?"

"I couldn't materialise. At all. Not for a while - I tried, but when I _could _do it again, I was still in his house, and he had already set up the trap." 

"I'm - sorry we didn't look for you there," Ryan replies carefully.

"Dude, you don't need to apologise," Jeremy scoffs, bumping his elbow 'against' Ryan's. "I just wish I could have let you guys know I wasn't dead. Well. Dead_er_." 

"What was he doing to you?"

"I think he was trying to figure out how to kill me." Jeremy lets out a little laugh, glancing at Ryan. "Mostly - mostly accusing me of...well, of what I did, and a lot of that fucking powder. Shot me a few times again but. Uh."

"Uh?" Ryan prompts, meeting Jeremy's eyes. Jeremy's visibly fighting back a smile.

"I don't think he ever realised his trap was keeping me alive in this plane," he says, breaking into a wide grin. "He was literally - if he just turned it off he probably could've killed me."

Ryan bursts out laughing, pressing a hand to his face as his shoulders shake, phasing him from shadow to material with each giggle.

"Well, I, for one, am glad he kept the trap," he manages eventually, smiling so much his cheeks hurt.

"So am I," Jeremy agrees. "So am-fucking-I."

They share a look and laughter bubbles out of them once more, and it's just like before. Jeremy shakes his head as he looks out across the city.

"What a fucking idiot," he sighs happily. Ryan busts out into unstoppable giggles. 


End file.
